Last month, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Prisons released an annual report on conditions in Britain’s jails. They are horrific. “Inspectors at the rat-infested HMP Liverpool could not remember worse conditions,” a statement released with the report read. Living conditions at Wormwood Scrubs were described as “appalling”. In March, the chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, had written to the government’s secretary of state for justice, David Gauke, to tell him that Nottingham Prison was in “dramatic decline”. There was a “persistent and fundamental lack of safety”, high levels of bullying and assaults on staff, and the level of suicide and self-harm was “tragic and appalling”.

Given this situation, the daily life of a prison chaplain is hard to imagine.